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Horner's effort was bland but it was FAR from the worst score this year, and in fact Zimmer's DKR is in the running for me. Typical Zimmer bombast. I detect no craft whatsoever, and that always bothers me. Absolutely no diversity in instrumentation or tone over the entire slogging affair. The score has no emotional depth or range as a result. Zimmer steadfastly refuses to engage in it: he wields an orchestra like someone sitting down at a synthesizer: literally everything in it is idiomatic to the piano. Counterpoint? What's that? Woodwinds? What the gently caress are those? No sir, it's unison horns (gently caress you, thematic harmony!) with string pads over the standard Zimmer heavy, heavy bass drones and sound effects. I guess if you like that sort of thing then its fine? Zimmer also fails to evolve his thematic ideas (what few there are) in any appreciable way. His Batman "theme" has remained the same, static theme it was in "Begins". No attempt is made to take it on an evolutionary journey with the character. It exists simply as a signpost that reads "And now: Here is Batman!" It's staggeringly obvious in this entry that James Newton Howard played no part (as he had in the previous two). I remember an interview where Zimmer and James Newton Howard talked about, on Batman Begins, how "You can't tell who did what!" ...yes, you can. You can absolutely tell. Generally, I find the vast majority of Zimmer's scores these days to pretty much fit the description I gave above. There are exceptions, but not nearly enough of them. We agree on Shore's "Hobbit", though. Might as well give him the Oscar right the gently caress now because holy poo poo is that an unbelievably well-crafted score. edit: On another note, awesome idea for a thread, OP! I'd thought about making one in the past but didn't know if it would get any traction. ComposerGuy fucked around with this message at 08:11 on Dec 3, 2012 |
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Dec 3, 2012 08:02
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I should mention that I absolutely detest what Zimmer has done with film music over the last 10 years or so, so I immediately approach everything he does with that at the front of my brain. He's much more of a "product" in my mind then anything else, especially when dissecting the work of his disciples, most of whom are completely interchangeable (a notable exception being John Powell, who broke away and starting doing MARVELOUS things). I agree that his style and James Newton Howard's don't mesh all that well...but all that did was make me wish JNH had done a solo effort on the films. Edit: I guess I should also admit that in my opinion Trent Reznor has no business scoring films, just because I'm sure that flame war is going to happen. TrixRabbi posted:I think I've mentioned this on the forums before, but does anyone else see a similarity between the score for Lawrence of Arabia, and the score for Starcrash? They're similar in the sense that the melodies share some of the same rhythmic characteristics, but that's about as far as I'd go with it. ComposerGuy fucked around with this message at 08:20 on Dec 3, 2012 |
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Dec 3, 2012 08:15
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I actually liked Zimmer's first Sherlock Holmes score, if that helps. Thought it was creative. You basically nailed my thoughts on Reznor and Ross. It's just...so...boring. I can't listen to it at all. Trudged through both scores just to be fair to them and of course listened in context with the films, but there's just nothing to them. It's what I call "Aural/Sonic Wallpaper" and it drives me insane.
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Dec 3, 2012 08:28
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Shore is one of those rare few who can turn on a dime and go from large, epic-length fantasy score to small, intimate personal score and still sound fantastic at both ends. His range as a composer is enormous, which makes sense for a guy who studied at Berklee College of Music.
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Dec 3, 2012 15:45
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Jewmanji posted:ComposerGuy, the only Powell I've heard was what I imagine was the main theme from How to Train Your Dragon, which has become a bit of a guilty pleasure for me (have not seen the movie). Is there something essential I should check out? The whole of "How To Train Your Dragon" is fantastic, and I believe his best work to date. Nothing guilty about it for me. There's staggering attention to detail in the structure of the cues and his melodies and counter-melodies just weave together perfectly. You can catch glimpses of what's to come in earlier work from him like "Robots". That was my first real indication that he was going to break away from the "Media Ventures" mold.
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Dec 4, 2012 01:50
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Timby posted:Powell's score for X-Men: The Last Stand was easily the best part of that movie, too. He actually uses it in a 3rd film, as well. It's used in Mr. Holland's Opus, but much more subdued and not driving. As for "Skyfall" above...I'm in the same boat as you. I was HIGHLY disappointed with Thomas Newman's output for the film. It just didn't mesh well at all.
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Dec 4, 2012 02:44
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Darko posted:For an art comparison, you remind me of what a lot of fine artists do, where they overly focus on the depth, layers and mixture of the paint itself, and deride people that focus on form and utilize digital techniques/painting in conjunction with standard painting. Because of traditionalism, and not working with much on the digital end, it is assumed that it is by default inferior to the traditional, as it's "easier" and "cheating" or doesn't contain as much "depth." This runs to taste (though I take serious issue with your assumption that I dismiss digital and synthetic scoring out-of-hand, which is certainly not the case: I work in that medium often. I take issue with Zimmer, not his medium). But suffice it to say that I find Zimmer to be smoke-and-mirrors the vast majority of the time and he does the one thing that, in art, I can't find a way around: he bores me. Whether I love something or hate something, I have at least engaged in the music and had a strong reaction to it. I don't hate what Zimmer does, I just don't find it the slightest bit interesting.
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Dec 4, 2012 15:35
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Darko posted:I can't stand Horner at this point - he's ridiculous. If you take any of the composers that popped up from the same era, ie. Zimmer/Elfman/Silvestri, etc., you see some gradual progression and evolution. They might go back to favorites or callbacks from time to time for stuff like action fills, and have a recognizable style, but you can post instances from ANY of them where they sound COMPLETELY different. Now here we definitely agree. I used to LOVE Horner, and I maintain that his work in the 80's and early 90's was good-to-great, especially for animated films. But basically right after Apollo 13 he started a downward slide that he never recovered from. He had started showing signs of self-lifting a bit earlier, but was still doing enough original work to forgive it. "Titanic" was the line.
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Dec 4, 2012 15:52
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Darko posted:I just find this weird, because, as a composer yourself, I'd think you'd appreciate how he works at modulating singular sounds to provide completely unique sounds, purposely matches an instrument to a character in more creative ways than average (ie. using razor blades on violin strings for the Joker's motif or uses a piano that is purposely out of tune for Sherlock to give the feeling of Sherlock's "out of tune" mind), and who is not afraid to completely change his style or experiment with certain projects. I spent a great deal of my time in university in the study of electro-acoustic composition, which is basically right in the wheelhouse of Zimmer. Sound design like you describe played a large role, obviously, and as an art form I can appreciate it has merits. But I found it lacked substance, at least as applied by those practicing it in academia, and it never excited me. I can't help that it bores me, it just does. I can appreciate that Zimmer is creative, but what I find interesting and not interesting is not something that is available for alteration via lightswitch. I don't mean to sound defensive at all. Obviously everyone's opinion is valid!
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Dec 4, 2012 16:13
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Darko posted:My "line" for Horner was A Beautiful Mind. I had not seen Bicentennial Man at that point, and thought that A Beautiful Mind was a wonderful return to form for him, and actually defended him. Then I heard Bicentennial Man, and saw how he just lifted a fill from that, extended it a couple of bars, and made it the main theme for ABM, and was pretty much like "gently caress you Horner." He does this all the time, and far worse than any other composer - who typically just take fills for action beats and such. I consider Apollo 13 to be he best, and his CONSTANT returning to the Apollo 13 well seems to bear that out. He re-uses stuff from that almost literally every score. I can understand occasionally ripping yourself off here and there. It happens. You have a "sound" that is uniquely you and you're bound to return to some familiar chord progressions and such in projects where you need to fill a lot of time and space, but Horner started strong, got rich, and said "gently caress it".
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Dec 4, 2012 20:18
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Darko posted:I'm going to admit that I don't really like the LOTR scores at all. Holy poo poo...I can't get enough brass, and one of my favorite users is David Arnold. His Stargate and Independence Day scores almost single-handedly defined how I approach the brass section. His writing for horn and trumpet especially is fantastic. As for LOTR...you had to have brass. That instrument section is crucial to the type of setting and mood the films were attempting to create. I understand personal tastes and whatnot (obvious I kicked off by invoking just that).
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Dec 7, 2012 16:57
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Hewlett posted:It's tough, but from what I can tell Alexandre Desplat is going crazy with the tinkly piano in a lot of his scores now (King's Speech, Benjamin Button), but most of his stuff is still incredibly solid - especially his action scoring. The aforementioned Horner is also doing plenty of the tinkly piano; I seem to remember quite a bit of it in ASM. Randy Newman has been known to employ this as well, though it certainly doesn't dominate his works. Pleasantville comes to mind as a stand-out example, which is also an example of his lean towards Americana-style scoring (he's basically New Aaron Copland in that regard).
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Dec 10, 2012 16:35
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Darko posted:The first time I remember this starting was around the time of Spider-man when people were complaining that he didn't have a recognizable theme you could "hum" like Elfman's Batman, ignoring that Batman's theme was embedded in the public consciousness with the advertising for the movie before the movie even came out (and then the secondary theme was drilled into our heads via it being made into the main Animated Series theme which we watched daily). The funny thing is that Spider-Man absolutely DID have a theme...and it played all the drat time in those movies. It's eight notes long and consists exclusively of whole and half notes, but it's there, and I always thought it was staggeringly obvious (though obviously others did not), and it can certainly be hummed.
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Dec 21, 2012 16:25
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ghableska posted:His review for The Social Network was great-- absolutely excoriating. "Buy it... if you have won the lottery, found your dream mate, got ripped abdominal muscles, hit the maximum allowable number of friends on Facebook, and need some morbidly disillusioning, hideously ambient electronic music to bring you crashing back down to Earth." Amazing.
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Dec 29, 2012 06:16
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Stare-Out posted:
That was expected based on the critical reception of The Hobbit. Newman's "Skyfall" has absolutely no business being on this list, good grief.
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Jan 10, 2013 16:17
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2013 OSCAR NOMINEES FOR BEST ORIGINAL SCORE
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Stare-Out posted:So Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross' "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" score won a Grammy yesterday My rage was actually physically manifest. You could touch it, it was so vivid.
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Feb 12, 2013 05:28
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quote:Earlier I heard something about a complete version of Zimmer/Gerrard's score for "Gladiator" floating around. Is that official and if so, how can I get my hands on it? I've been listening to the original score today and it's still really good. There's some unofficial bootlegs of the whole shebang floating about on the net, but I haven't heard of any "official" offerings.
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Feb 12, 2013 05:37
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the last signal... posted:What do you all think about the score for The Assassination of Jesse James? Eeeeeeeeeeeeh, its OK. I mean, not much about it really says "Western" to me, which is fine and all, but basically they do all the standard "now we are melancholy" chord progressions with occasional ostinato in the piano or other instrument and then repeat the same progressions over and over again. There's little to no variation. It never goes anywhere you don't expect. Yes, the chords are pretty...and then what? It's very much Sonic Wallpaper, which, again, is fine and some people like that kind of thing, but it just doesn't hold my interest.
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Feb 18, 2013 23:52
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Lord Krangdar posted:It's so hard to believe that Howard Shore made those lush pastoral Lord of the Rings scores but then he also made this (from Cronenberg's Crash): There's so much good poo poo going on in that score. That track in particular is just so meticulously crafted and put together. So many ideas in motion.
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Feb 19, 2013 06:39
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After seeming to drop off the face of the planet for a couple of years, John Ottman is back scoring Singer's "Jack the Giant Slayer". I picked it up today it's quite good. Ottman wields melody like few others and his ability to change the sonic landscape with his transitions is fantastic. Some great homages to a more old-school style of scoring and adventure flick, and there's plenty in here that will remind people of other composers (Williams, Silvestri and Goldsmith to name a few), but it's a great mix of those styles and it still comes across as Ottman. I maintain that his adaption of Williams' Superman material for Singer's Superman Returns was the best thing about that film. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Rx2XyR6cfk I love it when composers break away from the Hans Zimmer/Media Ventures/Remote Control method that Hollywood is bathed in these days, and Ottman is one of the guys who can absolutely do that. ComposerGuy fucked around with this message at 06:35 on Mar 7, 2013 |
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Mar 7, 2013 06:33
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The remarkable thing about Ottman is that he's not only a great composer, he's a great editor. ...and he directs. And produces. The man does everything.
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Mar 9, 2013 05:49
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Stare-Out posted:Apparently Ottman is editing Days of the Future Past which makes sense as it's a Singer flick but there's no word whether or not he's scoring it too. I hope that's the case; First Class had a pretty by-the-numbers score by Henry Jackman and it would be nice to get some of that X2 style back. That said, the score was probably the best part of X-Men 3 by a mile so I wouldn't mind getting John Powell back either. My bet is on Ottman scoring. When he edits he almost always scores for Singer. I agree that Powell would be just fine as well, though.
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Mar 16, 2013 22:50
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Because the vast majority of the time films are scored after editing is completed or at least mostly completed. They aren't writing blind. The scenes are playing in the recording session so that everything syncs up.
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Apr 29, 2013 04:48
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Williams' best score is "Hook". I will defend this opinion to the death.
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May 9, 2013 20:48
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Darko posted:Hey, ComposerGuy - I just made this one especially for you. It's called "Respect the Zimmer." Sadly, I couldn't include half of the more obscure stuff on there, and I had to use some City of Prague covers due to Spotify not having some originals: I never said Zimmer is incapable of writing stuff I can enjoy, just that he does it so infrequently now that I simply automatically assume every project he works on is going to be Zimmer-fied.
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May 10, 2013 19:14
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Double post I know, but as an example I absolutely love Zimmer's score for "The Prince of Egypt". Stephen Schwartz did good work on the songs, and I enjoy them, but the score really shines. The "God" theme in particular is very evocative (heard fully in the burning bush scene and the parting of the red sea). I like it even more than his work on Lion King, which is saying something.
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May 13, 2013 15:52
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haakman posted:I like his stuff, but I find the second phrase of the main Star Trek motif grating. One note in particular just doesn't gel with me. I'll have a listen and describe it in more musical detail when I get home. Please do, I'm very curious which note you're talking about.
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Jun 11, 2013 14:38
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Mahler posted:If we're still bandying our favorite Williams pieces, I'll throw in a few tracks from a "minor" Spielberg film: Empire of the Sun Great score that doesn't get talked about much. I was thinking about 80s movie themes the other day and realized that my favorite isn't actually a Williams theme...its Silvestri. I don't know what it is, but something about the theme from Back to the Future just makes it the definitive "80's Film" theme in my mind. He really nailed that one.
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Jun 11, 2013 14:50
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Stare-Out posted:I kind of agree. As much as I love stuff Williams did in the 80's and frankly loathed a lot of Silvestri's other work around that time, the BttF main theme is just something so perfect. The story behind the entire score is kind of funny as well; Zemeckis was concerned about the budget and the quality of the special effects and told Silvestri to at least make the movie "sound like it's incredibly epic" and boy did he deliver. BttF is one of those movies that loses the majority of its impact if you were to remove the score. And yet the practical effects for the DeLorean time-travel effect are still pretty drat good today IMO.
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Jun 11, 2013 15:37
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Darko posted:Predator > Back to the Future. Tone changes, crescendos, drum rhythm in 2... I like Predator, but when I think 80's, I think Back to the Future. Silvestri also rather clearly was riffing on his BTTF underscore all over that theme. That man loves him some octatonic scale.
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Jun 11, 2013 17:01
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Rocket Ace posted:Yes, I know that everyone HATES James Horner. As Darko mentioned above, this isn't actually true. There are 2 James Horners, really. The James Horner everyone loves did cool stuff in the 80s right up until the mid-90s with Braveheart and Apollo 13. Then he died. Now there's some Zombie James Horner using his name and stealing all his poo poo all the time.
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Jun 12, 2013 00:55
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Timby posted:Horner's always been a self-plagiarizer, though. His Star Trek II score lifts heavily from Battle Beyond the Stars, and the Aliens score directly quotes Star Trek III throughout. Oh I know, this is true. But in his early career it wasn't the only thing he was capable of. That hasn't been true since 1996.
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Jun 13, 2013 03:05
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Horner is well-known in the industry as the guy you bring in to do a really, really fast score job when something happens (like rejecting the score of another composer, or technical issues keeping a film in editing hell). The same thing happened with "Troy". He had to write the score AND get it recorded in less than 2 weeks (due to the composer originally hired, Gabriel Yared, being rejected at the last minute).
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Jun 14, 2013 16:00
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DNS posted:Thanks, Mahler. Generally speaking, this is pretty much how all of us should go through life already. Thanking Mahler every day.
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Jul 4, 2013 06:48
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I picked up the LaLa Land release of the extended score of "Home Alone" yesterday. I always forget just how much I love that score...is there another score in film history that just so perfectly screams "CHRISTMAS, MOTHERFUCKERS"? I submit there is not. The way Williams plays with carols all over the score (while inventing a few of his own), and his ability to get real range out of them from a mood standpoint is just spectacular. "Setting The Trap" is the best arrangement of what is essentially "Carol of the Bells" ever (with his own "Star of Bethlehem" thrown in for good measure, playing off each other). The nods to "The Nutcracker" in other places are also well executed ("Holiday Flight" being pretty much a send up to "Trepak" with some Copland sensibilities thrown in). I have to admit, though, that my favorite motif in the score is the one for the burglars, Harry and Marv. That low woodwind-heavy theme is just the right balance of sinister and softly comedic. It lets kids know that the bad guys are bad guys without being too scary about it. Plus I'm a sucker for that dual Bassoon-Bass Clarinet thing he's got going on.
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Jul 11, 2013 02:06
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Well, yes, but the whole score!
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Jul 11, 2013 04:45
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Darko posted:The whole movie is about Jesus and what Christmas is reallly supposed to be about so there! Christmas is about decorating trees and sledding down staircases so I don't know what you're talking about. 
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Jul 11, 2013 14:48
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Apparently, Williams will be back for the new Star Wars trilogy. Dude is 81. Get crackin', Disney. You need to move on this poo poo. ...please live John. 
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Jul 28, 2013 01:14
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Jewmanji posted:I wonder how much good material he can write on a good day. Or if he can compose the theme in one day and then spend a few weeks orchestrating it. Williams writes in 4-line piano staff (usually 3 treble and one bass with a percussive line) with notes and then passes it off to his orchestrators to extrapolate. His years of jazz experience means he can do it pretty quickly.
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Aug 1, 2013 14:43
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exquisite tea posted:It's weird that the main theme to The Cider House rules apparently isn't listed because I swear I've heard that a whole bunch for other stuff. This is likely because Rachel Portman uses the same chord progressions in almost literally all her main title themes. (I still love you Rachel)
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Aug 13, 2013 04:10
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